Konevskoi, Ivan (1. 1. Oreus) (1877-1901): Symbolist poet of Swedish origin.
Kornilov, Boris Petrovich (1907-1938): Soviet poet influenced by Ye- senin; a member of RAPP. He was arrested during the purges.
Kossior, Stanislav Vikentievich (1889-1939): Old Bolshevik, member of the Politburo from 1930; First Secretary of the Ukrainian Communist Party, 1928-38. He was arrested in 1938 and executed in 1939.
Kudasheva, Maria (Maya) Pavlovna: Daughter of a Russian father and a French mother; a friend of many Moscow writers. After corresponding with Romain Rolland, she moved to Switzerland and married him there. In 1937 visited Moscow with him.
Kuzmin, Mikhail Alexeyevich (1875-1936): Poet whose work influenced the transition from Symbolism to Acmeism.
Lakhuti, Abolgasem Akhmedzade (1887-1957): Persian revolutionary and poet. He left Iran for Turkey in 1917, and in 1922 emigrated to the U.S.S.R., where he held positions in the government of Tajikistan and in the Union of Soviet Writers.
Lakoba, Nestor lvanovich (1893-1936): Georgian Old Bolshevik; president of the executive committee of Abkhazia (an autonomous region of Georgia). Posthumously he was accused of a plot on Stalin's life.
Lapin, Boris Matveyevich (1905-1941): Soviet writer and translator; son- in-law of Ilia Ehrenburg. He was killed at the front as a war correspondent.
Lelevich, Grigori (Labori Gilelevich Kalmonson) (1901-1945): Soviet poet and critic. A member of RAPP until his expulsion in 1926 for opposing collaboration with the "Fellow Travelers." Arrested during the purges, he died in a forced-labor camp.
Leonov, Leonid Maximovich (1899- ): Major Soviet novelist and playwright. A complex figure who successfully adapted to the twists and turns of Party policy while struggling to retain some integrity as a writer.
Lermontov, Mikhail Yurievich (1814-1841): Great Russian poet and author of a famous novel, A Hero of Our Times. He was killed in a duel at the age of twenty-six.
Lezhnev (Altshuler), Isai Grigorievich (1891-1955): Editor and journalist. Between 1922 and 1926 he edited Novaya Rossia (New Russia) and Rossia (Russia), for which Mandelstam wrote. In 1926 he was expelled from the Party (he had joined the Bolsheviks before the Revolution) and was deported from the country by a decision of the GPU. In 1930 he "repented" and returned to the U.S.S.R., where his Party membership was restored. During 1935-39 be headed the art and literature section of Pravda.
Liashko, (Liashchenko), Nikolai N. (1884-1953): Novelist and short-story writer.
Linde, Fedor F. (?—1917): Bolshevik philosopher, mathematician and military commissar. He led the Finnish Guard Reserve regiment during the April crisis in 1917, and later that year was killed on the southwestern front by soldiers under his command. His death is described by Boris Pasternak in Dr. Zhivago, where Linde appears as "Gints."
Livshitz, Benedikt Konstantinovich (1887-1939): Poet associated with the Futurists; translator of French prose and poetry. In his memoirs, Polutoraglazy Strelets (The One-and-a-Half-Eyed Archer, Moscow, *933)> he brilliantly describes the origins of the Futurist movement. He was arrested in the purges—apparently having been accused of complicity in the assassination of the head of the Cheka, Uritski, in 1919—but has now been posthumously rehabilitated.
Lominadze, Besso (>-1934): Comintern official and member of the Central Committee. He was charged in 1930 with organizing an "anti- Party Left-Right bloc," and in 1934 he committed suicide.
Lozina-Lozinski, Alexei Konstantinovich (1888-1916): Poet.
Lozinski, Mikhail Leonidovich (1886-1955): Poet and translator from Spanish, French, English and Italian; one of the founders (with Nikolai Gumilev) of the Poets' Guild. He was awarded a Stalin prize in 1946 for his translation of Dante's Divine Comedy.
Lugovskoi, Vladimir Alexandrovich (1901-1957): Soviet poet. He served in the Red Army until 1924. His first poetry was published in 1925. During World War II he was a correspondent.
Luppol, Ivan Kapitonovich (1896-1943): Marxist literary historian, critic and editor. He headed the Gorki Institute of World Literature, 1935-40, and was elected a member of the Academy of Sciences in 1939. Arrested in 1940, he died in a forced-labor camp and has been posthumously rehabilitated.
Lysenko, Trofim Denisovich (1898- ): Biologist and member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. With the support of Stalin, he tried to
destroy all his opponents among the Soviet geneticists. He is now discredited.
Maikov, Apollon Nikolayevich (1821-1897): Poet.
Makovski, Sergei Konstantinovich (1877-1962): Son of the painter Kon- stantin Makovski, he wrote poetry, organized exhibitions of avant- garde Russian art, founded and edited the journal Apollon (in which Mandelstam published some of his early work) from 1909 to 1917. He emigrated to Prague and later to Paris. His memoir of Mandelstam was published in Portrety sovremennikov (Portraits of Contemporaries, New York, 1955). Since Mandelstam saw this before his death, it must have come out in an earlier version before the war, perhaps as an article in an emigre journal in Paris.
Malkin, Boris Fedorovich (1890-1942): Editor.
Markish, Perets Davidovich (1895-1952): Leading Yiddish poet, playwright and novelist. A member of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, he was arrested in 1948 and executed in 1952 together with other Yiddish writers.
Marshak, Samuil Yakovlevich (1887-1964): Translator (Shakespeare, Heine, Burns), poet and children's writer. In 1924-25 he edited a magazine especially for children, Novy Robinson (The New Robin* son [Crusoe]), in which some verse and translations by Mandelstam appeared. In 1925 and 1926, as head of the children's literature section of the State Publishing House, he published two books of verse for children by Mandelstam, Balloons and Two Tramcars. Though Marshak was noted for his political adaptability, he showed liberal tendencies after Stalin's death.
Mayakovski, Vladimir Vladimirovich (1893-1930): The leading figure in Russian Futurism. In addition to his vast output of poetry, he wrote two plays, The Bedbug and The Bathhouse, and edited the journal LEF (1923-25). Under attack by RAPP, involved in difficult love affairs and probably disillusioned by post-revolutionary reality (as one can judge from the two plays), he committed suicide in 1930. In 1935 Stalin said of him: "Mayakovski was and remains the best and the most talented poet of our Soviet epoch."